They walked about the court; Kai made jokes to help Hanno forget his bad mark, and Hanno listened and enjoyed.

“Look, here is a door, an outer door. It is open, and outside there is the street. How would it be if we were to go out and take a little walk? It is recess, and we have still six minutes. We could easily be back in time. But it ia perfectly impossible. You see what I mean? Here is the door. It is open, there is no grating, there is nothing, nothing whatever to prevent us. And yet it is impossible for us to step outside for even a second—it is even impossible for us to think of doing so. Well, let’s not think of it, then. Let’s take another example: we don’t say, for instance, that it is nearly half-past twelve. No, we say, ‘It’s nearly time for the geography period’! You see? Now, I ask, is this any sort of a life to lead? Everything is wrong. Oh, Lord, if the institution would just once let us out of her loving embrace!”

“Well, and what then? No, Kai, we should just have to do something then; here, at least we are taken care of. Since my Father died Herr Stephan Kistenmaker and Pastor Pringsheim have taken over the business of asking me every day what I want to be. I don’t know. I can’t answer. I can’t be anything. I’m afraid of everything—”

“How can anybody talk so dismally? What about your music?”

“What about my music, Kai? There is nothing to it. Shall I travel round and give concerts? In the first place, they wouldn’t let me; and in the second place, I should never really know enough. I can play very little. I can only improvise a little when I am alone. And then, the travelling about must be dreadful, I imagine. It is different with you. You have more courage. You go about laughing at it all—you have something to set against it. You want to write, to tell wonderful stories. Well, that is something. You will surely become famous, you are so clever. The thing is, you are so much livelier. Sometimes in class we look at each other, the way we did when Petersen got marked because he read out of a crib, when all the rest of us did the same. The same thought is in both our minds—but you know how to make a face and let it pass. I can’t. I get so tired of things. I’d like to sleep and never wake up. I’d like to die, Kai! No, I am no good. I can’t want anything. I don’t even want to be famous. I’m afraid of it, just as much as if it were a wrong thing to do. Nothing can come of me, that is perfectly sure. One day, after confirmation-class, I heard Pastor Pringsheim tell somebody that one must just give me up, because I come of a decayed family.”

“Did he say that?” Kai asked with deep interest.

“Yes; he meant my Uncle Christian, in the institution in Hamburg. One must just give me up—oh, I’d be so happy if they would! I have so many worries; everything is so hard for me. If I give myself a little cut or bruise anywhere, and make a wound that would heal in a week with anybody else, it takes a month with me. It gets inflamed and infected and makes me all sorts of trouble. Herr Brecht told me lately that all my teeth are in a dreadful condition—not to mention the ones that have been pulled already. If they are like that now, what will they be when I am thirty or forty years old? I am completely discouraged.”

“Oh, come,” Kai said, and struck into a livelier gait. “Now you must tell me something about your playing. I want to write something marvellous—perhaps I’ll begin it to-day, in drawing period. Will you play this afternoon?”

Hanno was silent a moment. A flush came upon his face, and a painful, confused look.

“Yes, I’ll play—I suppose—though I ought not. I ought to practise my sonatas and etudes and theh stop. But I suppose I’ll play; I cannot help it, though it only makes everything worse.”

“Worse?”

Hanno was silent.

“I know what you mean,” said Kai after a bit, and then neither of the lads spoke again.

They were both at the same difficult age. Kai’s face burned, and he cast down his eyes. Hanno looked pale and serious; his eyes had clouded over, and he kept giving sideways glances. Then the bell rang, and they went up.

The geography period came next, and an important test on the kingdom of Hesse-Nassau. A man with a red beard and brown tail-coat came in. His face was pale, and his hands were very full of pores, but without a single hair. This was “the clever one,” Dr. Mühsam. He suffered from occasional haemorrhages, and always spoke in an ironic tone, because it was his pose to be considered as witty as he was ailing. He possessed a Heine collection, a quantity of papers and objects connected with that cynical and sickly poet. He proceeded to mark the boundaries of Hesse-Nassau on the map that hung on the wall, and then asked, with a melancholy, mocking smile, if the gentlemen would indicate in their books the important features of the country. It was as though he meant to make game of the class and of Hesse-Nassau as well; yet this was an important test, and much dreaded by the entire form.

Hanno Buddenbrook knew next to nothing about Hesse-Nassau. He tried to look on Adolf Todtenhaupt’s book; but Heinrich Heine, who had a penetrating observation despite his suffering, melancholy air, pounced on him at once and said: “Herr Buddenbrook, I am tempted to ask you to close your book, but that I suspect you would be glad to have me do so. Go on with your work.”

The remark contained two witticisms. First, that Dr. Mühsam addressed Hanno as Herr Buddenbrook, and, second, that about the copy-book. Hanno continued to brood over his book, and handed it in almost empty when he went out with Kai.

The dificulties were now over with for the day. The fortunate ones who had come through without marks, had light and easy consciences, and life seemed like play to them as they betook themselves to the large well-lighted room where they might sit and draw under the supervision of Herr Drägemüller. Plaster casts from the antique stood about the room, and there was a great cupboard containing divers pieces of wood and doll-furniture which served as models. Herr Drägemüller was a thick-set man with a full round beard and a smooth, cheap brown wig which stood out in the back of the neck and betrayed itself. He possessed two wigs, one with longer hair, the other with shorter; if he had had his beard cut he would don the shorter wig as well. He was a man with some droll peculiarities of speech. For instance, he called a lead pencil a “lead.” He gave out an oily-alcoholic odour; and it was said of him that he drank petroleum. It always delighted him to have an opportunity to take a class in something besides drawing. On such occasions he would lecture on the policy of Bismarck, accompanying himself with impressive spiral gestures from his nose to his shoulder. Social democracy was his bugbear—he spoke of it with fear and loathing. “We must keep together,” he used to say to refractory pupils, pinching them on the arm. “Social democracy is at the door!” He was possessed by a sort of spasmodic activity: would sit down next a pupil, exhaling a strong spirituous odour, tap him on the forehead with his seal ring, shoot out certain isolated words and phrases like “Perspective! Light and shade! The lead! Social democracy! Stick together!”—and then dash off again.

Kai worked at his new literary project during this period, and Hanno occupied himself with conducting, in fancy, an overture with full orchestra. Then school was over, they fetched down their things, the gate was opened, they were free to pass, and they went home.

Hanno and Kai went the same road together as far as the little red villa, their books under their arms. Young Count Mölln had a good distance farther to go alone before he reached the paternal dwelling. He never wore an overcoat.

The morning’s fog had turned to snow, which came down in great white flocks and rapidly became slush. They parted at the Buddenbrook gate; but when Hanno was half-way up the garden Kai came back to put his arm about his neck. “Don’t give up—better not play!” he said gently. Then his slender, careless figure disappeared in the whirling snow.

Hanno put down his books on the bear’s tray in the corridor and went into the living room to see his mother. She sat on the sofa reading a book with a yellow paper cover, and looked up as he crossed the room. She gazed at him with her brown, close-set, blue-shadowed eyes; as he stood before her, she took his head in both her hands and kissed him on the brow.

He went upstairs, where Fräulein Clementine had some luncheon ready for him, washed, and ate. When he was done he took out of his desk a packet of little biting Russian cigarettes and began to smoke. He was no stranger to their use by now. Then he sat down at the harmonium and played something from Bach; something very severe and difficult, in fugue form. At length he clasped his hands behind his head and looked out the window at the snow noiselessly tumbling down. Nothing else was to be seen; for there was no longer a charming little garden with a plashing fountain beneath his window. The view was cut off by the grey side-wall of the neighbouring villa.

Dinner was at four o’clock, and Hanno, his mother, and Fräulein Clementine sat down to it. Afterward Hanno saw that there were preparations for music in the salon, and awaited his mother at the piano. They played the Sonata Opus 24 of Beethoven. In the adagio the violin sang like an angel; but Gerda took the instrument from her chin with a dissatisfied air, looked at it in irritation, and said it was not in tune. She played no more, but went up to rest.

Hanno remained in the salon. He went to the glass door that led out on the small verandah and looked into the drenched garden. But suddenly he took a step back and jerked the cream-coloured curtains across the door, so that the room lay in a soft yellow twilight. Then he went to the piano. He stood for a while, and his gaze, directed fixed and unseeing upon a distant point, altered slowly, grew blurred and vague and shadowy. He sat down at the instrument and began to improvise.

It was a simple motif which he employed—a mere trifle, an unfinished fragment of melody in one bar and a half. He brought it out first, with unsuspected power, in the bass, as a single voice: indicating it as the source and fount of all that was to come, and announcing it, with a commanding entry, by a burst of trumpets. It was not quite easy to grasp his intention; but when he repeated and harmonized it in the treble, with a timbre like dull silver, it proved to consist essentially of a single resolution, a yearning and painful melting of one tone into another—a short-winded, pitiful invention, which nevertheless gained a strange, mysterious, and significant value precisely by means of the meticulous and solemn precision with which it was defined and produced. And now there began more lively passages, a restless coming and going of syncopated sound, seeking, wandering, torn by shrieks like a soul in unrest and tormented by some knowledge it possesses and cannot conceal, but must repeat in ever different harmonies, questioning, complaining, protesting, demanding, dying away. The syncopation increased, grew more pronounced, driven hither and thither by scampering triplets; the shrieks of fear recurred, they took form and became melody. There was a moment when they dominated, in a mounting, imploring chorus of wind-instruments that conquered the endlessly thronging, welling, wandering, vanishing harmonies, and swelled out in unmistakable simple rhythms—a crushed, childlike, imposing, imploring chorale. This concluded with a sort of ecclesiastical cadence. A fermate followed, a silence. And then, quite softly, in a timbre of dull silver, there came the first motif again, the paltry invention, a figure either tiresome or obscure, a sweet, sentimental dying-away of one tone into another. This was followed by a tremendous uproar, a wild activity, punctuated by notes like fanfares, expressive of violent resolve. What was coming? Then came horns again, sounding the march; there was an assembling, a concentrating, firm, consolidated rhythms; and a new figure began, a bold improvisation, a sort of lively, stormy hunting song. There was no joy in this hunting song; its note was one of defiant despair. Signals sounded through it; yet they were not only signals but cries of fear; while throughout, winding through it all, through all the writhen, bizarre harmonies, came again that mysterious first motif, wandering in despair, torturingly sweet. And now began a ceaseless hurry of events whose sense and meaning could not be guessed, a restless flood of sound-adventures, rhythms, harmonies, welling up uncontrolled from the keyboard, as they shaped themselves under Hanno’s labouring fingers, He experienced them, as it were; he did not know them beforehand. He sat a little bent over the keys, with parted lips and deep, far gaze, his brown hair covering his forehead with its soft curls. What was the meaning of what he played? Were these images of fearful difficulties surmounted flames passed through and torrents swum, castles stormed and dragons slain? But always—now like a yelling laugh, now like an ineffably sweet promise—the original motif wound through it all, the pitiful phrase with its notes melting into one another! Now the music seemed to rouse itself to new and gigantic efforts: wild runs in octaves followed, sounding like shrieks; an irresistible mounting, a chromatic upward struggle, a wild relentless longing, abruptly broken by startling, arresting pianissimi which gave a sensa tion as if the ground were disappearing from beneath one’s feet, or like a sudden abandonment and sinking into a gulf of desire. Once, far off and softly warning, sounded the first chords of the imploring prayer; but the flood of rising cacophonies overwhelmed them with their rolling, streaming, clinging, sinking, and struggling up again, as they fought on toward the end that must come, must come this very moment, at the height of this fearful climax—for the pressure of longing had become intolerable. And it came; it could no longer be kept back—those spasms of yearning could not be prolonged. And it came as though curtains were rent apart, doors sprang open, thorn-hedges parted of themselves, walls of flame sank down. The resolution, the redemption, the complete fulfilment—a chorus of jubilation burst forth, and everything resolved itself in a harmony—and the harmony, in sweet ritardando, at once sank into another. It was the motif, the first motif! And now began a festival, a triumph, an unbounded orgy of this very figure, which now displayed a wealth of dynamic colour which passed through every octave, wept and shivered in tremolo, sang, rejoiced, and sobbed in exultation, triumphantly adorned with all the bursting, tinkling, foaming, purling resources of orchestral pomp. The fanatical worship of this worthless trifle, this scrap of melody, this brief, childish harmonic invention only a bar and a half in length, had about it something stupid and gross, and at the same time something ascetic and religious—something that contained the essence of faith and renunciation. There was a quality of the perverse in the insatiability with which it was produced and revelled in: there was a sort of cynical despair; there was a longing for joy, a yielding to desire, in the way the last drop of sweetness was, as it were, extracted from the melody, till exhaustion, disgust, and satiety supervened. Then, at last; at last, in the weariness after excess, a long, soft arpeggio in the minor trickled through, mounted a tone, resolved itself in the major, and died in mournful lingering away.

Hanno sat still a moment, his chin on his breast, his hands in his lap. Then he got up and closed the instrument. He was very pale, there was no strength in his knees, and his eyes were burning. He went into the next room, stretched himself on the chaise-lounge, and remained for a long time motionless.

Later there was supper, and he played a game of chess with his mother, at which neither side won. But until after midnight he still sat in his room, before his harmonium, and played—played in thought only, for he must make no noise. He did this despite his firm intention to get up the next morning at half-past five, to do some most necessary preparation.

This was one day in the life of little Johann.

CHAPTER III

Cases of typhoid fever take the following course.

The patient feels depressed and moody—a condition which grows rapidly worse until it amounts to acute despondency. At the same time he is overpowered by physical weariness, not only of the muscles and sinews, but also of the organic functions, in particular of the digestion—so that the stomach refuses food. There is a great desire for sleep, but even in conditions of extreme fatigue the sleep is restless and superficial and not refreshing. There is pain in the head, the brain feels dull and confused, and there are spells of giddiness. An indefinite ache is felt in all the bones. There is blood from the nose now and then, without apparent cause.—This is the onset.

Then comes a violent chill which seizes the whole body and makes the teeth chatter; the fever sets in, and is immediately at its height. Little red spots appear on the breast and abdomen, about the size of a lentil. They go away when pressed by the finger, but return at once. The pulse is unsteady; there are about a hundred pulsations to the minute. The temperature goes up to 104°. Thus passes the first week.

In the second week the patient is free from pain in the head and limbs; but the giddiness is distinctly worse, and there is so much humming in the ears that he is practically deaf. The facial expression becomes dull, the mouth stands open, the eyes are without life. The consciousness is blurred, desire for sleep takes entire possession of the patient, and he often sinks, not into actual sleep, but into a leaden lethargy. At other intervals there are the loud and excited ravings of delirium. The patient’s helplessness is complete, and his uncleanliness becomes repulsive. His gums, teeth, and tongue are covered with a blackish deposit which makes his breath foul. He lies motionless on his back, with distended abdomen. He has sunk down in the bed, with his knees wide apart. Pulse and breathing are rapid, jerky, superficial and laboured; the pulse is fluttering, and gallops one hundred and twenty to the minute. The eyelids are half closed, the cheeks are no longer glowing, but have assumed a bluish colour. The red spots on breast and abdomen are more numerous. The temperature reaches 105.8°.

In the third week the weakness is at its height. The patient raves no longer: who can say whether his spirit is sunk in empty night or whether it lingers, remote from the flesh, in far, deep, quiet dreams, of which he gives no sound and no sign? He lies in total insensibility. This is the crisis of the disease.

In individual cases the diagnosis is sometimes rendered more difficult; as, for example, when the early symptoms—depression, weariness, lack of appetite, headache and unquiet sleep—are nearly all present while the patient is still going about in his usual health; when they are scarcely noticeable as anything out of the common, even if they are suddenly and definitely increased. But a clever doctor, of real scientific acumen—like, for example, Dr. Langhals, the good-looking Dr. Langhals with the small, hairy hands—will still be in a position to call the case by its right name; and the appearance of the red spots on the chest and abdomen will be conclusive evidence that his diagnosis was correct. He will know what measures to take and what remedies to apply. He will arrange for a large, well-aired room, the temperature of which must not be higher than 70°. He will insist on absolute cleanliness, and by means of frequent shifting and changes of linen will keep the patient free from bedsores—if possible; in some cases it is not possible. He will have the mouth frequently cleansed with moist linen rags. As for treatment, preparations of iodine, potash, quinine, and antipyrin are indicated—with a diet as light and nourishing as possible, for the patient’s stomach and bowels are profoundly attacked by the disease. He will treat the consuming fever by means of frequent baths, into which the patient will often be put every three hours, day and night, cooling them gradually from the foot end of the tub, and always, after each bath, administering something stimulating, like brandy or champagne.

But all these remedies he uses entirely at random, in the hope that they may be of some use in the case; ignorant whether any one of them will have the slightest effect. For there is one thing which he does not know at all; with respect to one fact, he labours in complete darkness. Up to the third week, up to the very crisis of the disease, he cannot possibly tell whether this illness, which he calls typhoid, is an unfortunate accident, the disagreeable consequence of an infection which might perhaps have been avoided, and which can be combated with the resources of medical science; or whether it is, quite simply, a form of dissolution, the garment, as it were, of death. And then, whether death choose to assume this form or another is all the same—against him there is no remedy,

Cases of typhoid take the following course:

When the fever is at its height, life calls to the patient: calls out to him as he wanders in his distant dream, and summons him in no uncertain voice. The harsh, imperious call reaches the spirit on that remote path that leads into the shadows, the coolness and peace. He hears the call of life, the clear, fresh, mocking summons to return to that distant scene which he has already left so far behind him, and already forgotten. And there may well up in him something like a feeling of shame for a neglected duty; a sense of renewed energy, courage, and hope; he may recognize a bond existing still between him and that stirring, colourful, callous existence which he thought he had left so far behind him. Then, however far he may have wandered on his distant path, he will turn back—and live. But if he shudders when he hears life’s voice, if the memory of that vanished scene and the sound of that lusty summons make him shake his head, make him put out his hand to ward it off as he flies forward in the way of escape that has opened to him—then it is clear that the patient will die.

CHAPTER IV

“It is not right, it is not right, Gerda,” said old Fraulein Weichbrodt, perhaps for the hundredth time. Her voice was full of reproach and distress. She had a sofa place to-day in the circle that sat round the centre-table in the drawing-room of her former pupil. Gerda Buddenbrook, Frau Permaneder, her daughter Erica, poor Clothilde, and the three Misses Buddenbrook made up the group. The green cap-strings still fell down upon the old lady’s childish shoulders; but she had grown so tiny, with her seventy-five years of life, that she could scarcely raise her elbow high enough to gesticulate above the surface of the table.

“No, it is not right, and so I tell you, Gerda,” she repeated. She spoke with such warmth that her voice trembled. “I have one foot in the grave, my time is short—and you can think of leaving me—of leaving us all—for ever! If it were just a visit to Amsterdam that you were thinking of—but to leave us for ever—!” She shook her bird-like old head vigorously, and her brown eyes were clouded with her distress. “Tt is true, you have lost a great deal—”

“No, she has not lost a great deal, she has lost everything,” said Frau Permaneder. “We must not be selfish, Therese. Gerda wishes to go, and she is going—that is all. She came with Thomas, one-and-twenty years ago; and we all loved her, though she very likely didn’t like any of us—No, you didn’t, Gerda; don’t deny it!—But Thomas is no more—and nothing is any more. What are we to her? Nothing. We feel it very much, we cannot help feeling it; but yet I say, go, with God’s blessing, Gerda, and thanks for not going before, when Thomas died.”

It was an autumn evening, after supper. Little Johann (Justus, Johann, Kaspar) had been lying for nearly six months, equipped with the blessing of Pastor Pringsheim, out there at the edge of the little grove, beneath the sandstone cross, beneath the family arms. The rain rustled the half-leafless trees in the avenue, and sometimes gusts of wind drove it against the window-panes. All eight ladies were dressed in black.

The little family had gathered to take leave of Gerda Buddenbrook, who was about to leave the town and return to Amsterdam, to play duets once more with her old father. No duties now restrained her. Frau Permaneder could no longer oppose her decision. She said it was right, she knew it must be so; but in her heart she mourned over her sister-in-law’s departure. If the Senator’s widow had remained in the town, and kept her station and her place in society, and left her property where it was, there would still have remained a little prestige to the family name. But let that be as it must, Frau Antonie was determined to hold her head high while she lived and there were people to look at her. Had not her grandfather driven with four horses all over the country?

Despite the stormy life that lay behind her, and despite her weak digestion, she did not look her fifty years. Her skin was a little faded and downy, and a few hairs grew on her upper lip—the pretty upper lip of Tony Buddenbrook. But there was not a white hair in the smooth coiffure beneath the mourning cap.

Poor Clothilde bore up under the departure of her relative, as one must bear up under the afflictions of this life. She took it with patience and tranquillity. She had done wonders at the supper table, and now she sat among the others, lean and grey as of yore, and her words were drawling and friendly.

Erica Weinschenk, now thirty-one years old, was likewise not one to excite herself unduly over her aunt’s departure. She had lived through worse things, and had early learned resignation. Submission was her strongest characteristic: one read it in her weary light-blue eyes—the eyes of Bendix Grünlich—and heard it in the tones of her patient, sometimes plaintive voice.

The three Misses Buddenbrook, Uncle Gotthold’s daughters, wore their old affronted and critical air; Friederike and Henriette, the eldest, had grown leaner and more angular with the years; while Pfiffi, the youngest, now fifty-three years old, was much too little and fat.

Old Frau Consul Kröger, Uncle Justus’ widow, had been asked too, but she was rather ailing—or perhaps she had no suitable gown to put on: one couldn’t tell which.

They talked about Gerda’s journey and the train she was to take; about the sale of the villa and its furnishings, which Herr Gosch had undertaken. For Gerda was taking nothing with her—she was going away as she had come.

Then Frau Permaneder began to talk about life. She was very serious and made observations upon the past and the future—though of the future there was in truth almost nothing to be said.

“When I am dead,” she declared, “Erica may move away if she likes. But as for me, I cannot live anywhere else; and so long as I am on earth, we will come together here, we who are left. Once a week you will come to dinner with me—and we will read the family papers.” She put her hand on the portfolio that lay before her on the table. “Yes, Gerda, I will take them over, and he glad to have them. Well, that is settled. Do you hear, Tilda? Though it might exactly as well be you who should invite us, for you are just as well off as we are now. Yes—so it goes. I’ve struggled against fate, and done my best, and you have just sat there and waited for everything to come round. But you are a goose, you know, all the same—please don’t mind if I say so—”

“Oh, Tony,” Clothilde said, smiling.

“I am sorry I cannot say good-bye to Christian,” said Gerda, and the talk turned aside to that subject. There was small prospect of his ever coming out of the institution in which he was confined, although he was probably not too bad to go about in freedom. But the present state of things was very agreeable for his wife. She was, Fran Permaneder asserted, in league with the doctor; and Christian would, in all probability, end his days where he was.

There was a pause. They touched delicately and with hesitation upon recent events, and when one of them let fall little Johann’s name, it was still in the room, except for the sound of the rain, which fell faster than before.

This silence lay like a heavy secret over the events of Hanno’s last illness. It must have been a frightful onslaught. They did not look in each other’s eyes as they talked; their voices were hushed, and their words were broken. But they spoke of one last episode—the visit of the little ragged count who had almost forced his way to Hanno’s bedside. Hanno had smiled when he heard his voice, though he hardly knew any one; and Kai had kissed his hands again and again.

“He kissed his hands?” asked the Buddenbreok ladies.

“Yes, over and over.”

They all thought for a while of this strange thing, and then suddenly Frau Permaneder burst into tears.

“I loved him so much,” she sobbed. “You don’t any of you know how much—more than any of you—yes, forgive me, Gerda—you are his mother.—Oh, he was an angel.”

“He is an angel, now,” corrected Sesemi.

“Hanno, little Hanno,” went on Frau Permaneder, the tears flowing down over her soft faded cheeks. “Tom, Father, Grandfather, and all the rest! Where are they? We shall see them no more. Oh, it is so sad, so hard!”

“There will be a reunion,” said Friederike Buddenbrook. She folded her hands in her lap, cast down her eyes, and put her nose in the air.

“Yes—they say so.—Oh, there are times, Friederike, when that is no consolation, God forgive me! When one begins to doubt—doubt justice and goodness—and everything. Life crushes so much in us, it destroys so many of our beliefs—! A reunion—if that were so—”

But now Sesemi Weichbrodt stood up, as tall as ever she could. She stood on tip-toe, rapped on the table; the cap shook on her old head.

“It is so!” she said, with her whole strength; and looked at them all with a challenge in her eyes.

She stood there, a victor in the good fight which all her life she had waged against the assaults of Reason: humpbacked, tiny, quivering with the strength of her convictions, a little prophetess, admonishing and inspired.

THE END